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The research was prompted by the anomaly which appeared to exist between the view of drama as it is presented in the literature, and its representation in special schools curricula. In the literature drama is presented as a desirable curricular element which can be a valuable means of benefiting pupils over a variety of learning areas. In practice, many special schools make no provision for drama, and in only a small proportion of schools is it taught on any regular or systematic basis. The project established that the extent of the neglect of drama in special education was considerable, and that the reasons for the neglect lay more in staff's ignorance of its educational potential than in their perception of its value or lack of value. Analysis suggested that it would be necessary for staff to experience, at first hand in their own classrooms, the teaching of drama and the outcomes of that teaching in order that they might arrive at a personal assessment of its value to them in their work. In order to achieve this, a curriculum research and development project was carried out. This involved: a) the analysis of the educational justification for drama in special educational curricula, its possible aims, the methods appropriate to teaching it, the activities it may comprise, and the role of the teacher in the drama lesson; b) an examination of the extent to which theory was bourne out in practice under a variety of classroom conditions within schools for severely and profoundly mentally handicapped pupils, and in collaboration with staff within the schools; c) the development of lesson plans and teaching materials which would embody the principles outlined and which could be disseminated for use and critical testing to a wider cross-section of schools. The following are the main conclusions: 1. Although it may be crucial to the development of profoundly mentally handicapped pupils to ensure that they have adequate stimulation through the provision of activities in movement and music, the provision of regular drama lessons by general staff may be less essential since a) many of the pupils may not be sufficiently developed to comprehend the symbolic aspects of drama as an imaginative, enactive means of representing and interpreting experience; b) the pupils who can respond to the process of drama wAy be those autistic or behaviourally disturbed children who may need specialist help if drama is to be made accessible to them on a regular and systematic basis. 2. Severely mentally handi"capped pupils can benefit from drama in a variety of important ways, depending on the nature of the drama provision offered. Staff within the present project were more willing to learn and use the simpler drama techniques. While the more complex techniques can be used as a means of stimulating problem-solving abilities and imaginative development, the simpler techniques are useful in stimulating language development, in improving social skills, in reducing passivity in the more lethargic pupils, and in encouraging the emergence and development of corporate imagir.ative play. 3. The pupils who appeared to benefit most from the provision of drama in the present project were those lively Down's Syndrome children who appear to have a natural aptitude for dra~A, and some of the more passive or withdrawn children. Host noticeable benefits were in the development of communication abilities, in the extension of dramatic play, and in the reduction of passivity. 4. In this project, behaviourally disturbed and hyperactive, severely mentally handicapped pupils appeared to benefit least from normal classroom drama provision. There may be a need to make specialist provision for such pupils. There is a need for further research to clarify their reactions and the reactions of profoundly handicapped pupils with similar problems. 5. As a result of their involvement in the project, staff from over forty schools were enabled to try out drama on a systematic and regular basis, and to arrive at a personal assessment of its value to them in their teaching. Over two thirds have gone on to include drama in their curricular schemes. 6. staff involved in the collaborative research have acquired a degree of expertise in the curriculum research and development process, and in the teaching of drama. The author recommends that this expertise be utilised and exploited by encouraging such staff to regard their schools as resource centres and to be willing to help staff from other schools in the development and planning of lessons. Skill-sharing of this kind might go same way towards compensating for the lack of specialist drama teachers in this field of education. The anomaly between the neglect of drama and its value as represented in the literature is largely explained by a lack of appropriate teaching materials, staff's lack of knowledge of drama and its practices, and staff's unwillingness to attempt the more complex drama techniques. Skill-sharing might also help reduce some of these barriers to the adoption of drama in schools. The author also re-examines, in the concluding sections of the thesis, the rationale underpinning the method of curriculum research and development adopted in the project. She attempts to illuminate some of the strengths and weaknesses of this methodology by reference to the practical difficulties experienced in the course of the project •. She argues that these reflect a more general disquiet in the research literature about the methods applicable to curricul~~ research, development and evaluation. She suggests that there maybe a .need for a reappraisal of curriculum theory to encompass the kind of practical difficulties which appear to be concomitants to collaborative research in education. And she argues that this reappraisal may be particularly important where, as was the case in this project, the research design incorporates the development of teaching materials and the dissemination of these for field testing within a sample of schools which have not been involved in the initial research and development.

The present provision of continuing education for professionals in the form of periodicals, journals, seminars, conferences, talks and in-service programmes, do not always address specific needs and problems of individual professionals. On the basis that there are basically two types of needs involved in this case, for instance, national or managerial needs and the other being specific individual needs, the thesis has attempted to establish, a priori, the increasing need for professionals to keep up-to-date with developments and generally to ensure satisfactory standards of performance in practice, and that whilst the in-service and refresher courses provided by the government or central agency in Malaysia provides for the national individual needs, which may not be included.In response to this gap in the provision for the continuing education of professionals in Malaysia, this thesis provides the specifications for the provision of continuing education programmes for professionals in Malaysia. Two pilot project materials, one for Malaysian general practitioners in private service, and the other for Malaysian primary school teachers of English, were implemented to test the criteria for the provision of continuing education for professionals in Malaysia. The criteria for continuing education programmes for professionals in Malaysia include:Opening up new opportunities for learning for professionals.Providing accessible provision which is convenient to use.In response to specific needs of the professionals the materials should be:-(i) relevant;(ii) beneficial in terms of return for time invested;(iii) individualised in terms of needs and feedback;(iv) self-assessed; and,(v) reasonably priced.Administrative and learner support should be available at the providing institutional level and also at the regional level and learner support should be made available in a variety of modes.Professionals involved in continuing education programmes on non-credit basis, but the materials should allow for certification. There could be provision for assessment on credit basis, but this would be optional.Publicity and information regarding the provision should reach the target population.The provision should be collaborative between the providing agencies and institutions or other.Although the pilot projects to test the criteria were implemented for doctors in the community and primary school teachers of English, there seem no reasons to suggest that the criteria for open learning systems for continuous education provision presented in this thesis could not be applied in other professions as well in Malaysia.

This project looks at the ability of young adolescents at lower secondary level to recognise experiments as ways of asking questions in scientific investigations. Many science curricula emphasise the need for pupils to develop skills necessary for experimenting, like planning and designing experiments for investigations, deciding on which variables to manipulate during the experiment, recognising a critical piece of information which could be used to plan and design a critical experiment. A number of questions based on the available literature and theoretical evidence were raised. These questions formed the basis for the study: (1) Do pupils at lower secondary level appreciate the inclusion of experiments in science learning? (2) Can these pupils identify a critical piece of information necessary for providing a credible solution to a problem? (3) Do lower secondary level pupils have the ability to conceptualise or see experiments as ways of asking critical questions in scientific investigations? ( 4) Can the development of the experimenting skill in those pupils at lower secondary level who have not yet developed it be accelerated through appropriate teaching? (5) Can lower secondary pupils from completely different teaching and cultural backgrounds demonstrate similar performances in terms of seeing the experiment as a way of asking critical questions in scientific investigations? To answer these questions a three stage investigation was used. Each stage was called an experiment. For the entire investigation, a total of 1964 pupils were used from Botswana [junior (lower) secondary schools] and Scotland [lower secondary schools]. A card game called Eloosis, questionnaires/tests, teaching units and interviews were employed at different stages of the investigations. The teaching units and Eloosis were used to help pupils accelerate the development of the ability to recognise critical pieces of information for critical experiments in scientific investigations where possible. The questionnaires/tests were designed to examine evidence of the development of this ability skills. Interviews were meant to solicit more information from pupils regarding the ability of the pupils to conceptualise the place and nature of experimentation in scientific enquiry. However, Scotland pupils and one sample of the Botswana pupils did not participate in the use of teaching units. The data collect from the Scotland pupils was primarily used to establish the wider acceptance of the results obtained from the Botswana group. From the results obtained from this study, it was clear that pupils from different educational and cultural settings equally appreciated the inclusion of experimental work in their science activities. However, their perceptions of its place and purpose differed from those of the curriculum planners. The evidence from the data analysis suggested that the ability to see experiments as ways of asking questions in scientific investigations is significantly developmental and cannot be homogeneously accelerated. The result appears to be true for all pupils at this age range regardless of their educational and cultural background. There was also a general lack of the ability to identify a critical piece of information which, in the opinion of this project is related to the ability to recognise critical experiments for working out solutions to scientific problems. However, it was not possible to gain much insight into the extent to which the teaching units and Eloosis, when used over a longer period of time, could impact on the development of the experimental skills. The reason for this lies within the restrictions on time and the Willingness of the schools to allow such a prolonged access to their pupils. It also emerged from the interview results that most pupils, in their responses, confused experimenting with practical work. This finding explains why a significantly higher number of the pupils indicated that what they liked most about their science lessons were experiments.

The ideas of children's rights, children's right to education and compulsory education are widely accepted nowadays, if only in general terms. This thesis is concerned to explore and offer possible reasons for the acceptance of these ideas, and, particularly, to clarify the relation between the ideas of `lq children's right to education and `lq compulsory education. First, however, it is necessary to consider the general features of rights-talk, on the grounds that the denotations and connotations of rights-talk have some significant bearings on the central issues of the thesis. Thereafter, the emphasis is shifted to the question of children's rights. Certain writers' theories - namely, Hobbes', Mill's and Hart's - were once assumed to be contradictory to the idea of children's rights, but it is argued that these writers' theories have been misunderstood. Apart from clarifying these writers' theories in relation to children's rights, the thrust of this thesis is to offer a convincing justification for the idea of children's rights in general, and children's rights is rationally acceptable and practically necessary in maintaining satisfactory relationships between children and other parties for people who are rational, self-interested, just and benevolent. It is also argued that children's right to education is justifiable on the grounds that it is an essential good for both children and society as a whole. The issue of children's right to education is tackled within the framework of liberal democracy; hence the form of education proposed is also geared to the cultivation of persons who can play a part in a liberal democracy. The issue of compulsory education is discussed. It is argued that compulsory education can be justified and that its justification is mainly based on paternalism and children's obligation to undertake education. In the concluding chapter, it is argued that children's right to education can indeed be used to justify compulsory education, but this line of reasoning should be based on paternalism, which in turn should be rights-based. The thesis finally reaches the conclusion that the option-rights tradition and the claim that rights-talk is not self-referring should be rejected.

This dissertation is an autoethnographic study recounting my experience of working in an urban primary school between 2008 and 2010. Over a two year period, during which time I was acting headteacher and then principal teacher, I recorded my experiences in a daily journal. My focus was on children, especially children living in areas of challenging socio-economic conditions. Starting with a concern that their school experiences and interactions with adults are undemocratic and unsatisfactory, my focus in this study was to question how democratic schools are for children. From the numerous themes available, I chose to focus on the experience of children through the interactions and relationships in school structures. I consider pressures on staff and the effects of policy on the profession and the impact of these on developing democracy for children. Over eight chapters, a number of themes permeate the dissertation, including relationships and an assessment of how children are viewed in school and in society generally. Children’s treatment in the school environment has barely changed over many decades. This is in direct contrast with freedoms they enjoy outside of school from, for example, their use of information communication technology. The dissertation looks to highlight the challenges that face the teaching profession and the ways in which the pressures associated with education currently conspire against developing democracy for children. I conclude by anticipating possible changes to the status quo that could, if implemented, increase democratic opportunities in schools. Prospects for change include a reassessment of leadership roles, further engagement with Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) and the adoption of a more radical educational approach.

This narrative inquiry grew from my concerns that the voices of dental practitioners were going unheard in movements to reform professional development, in particular through information and communication technology (ICT). Recently, professional development policy has been driven by calls for a greater use of ICT for education, healthcare and professional development. However, from casual conversations in my own practice and with colleagues, I noted tensions that raised questions on the rationale underpinning many of the changes taking place. I began to ask what we might understand by professional development, and how we might seek it through ICT. In turning to literature on professional development, dentistry was a relatively unexplored area. In addition, little was known about the actual experiences of those seeking professional development. My concerns and questions, combined with this lack of research in the field of dental professional development and the use of ICT, suggested the need to explore the experiences of dental practitioners undertaking professional development and to consider their views on ICT. My assumption is that experiences are embedded in everyday conversations and exchanges as the stories we tell each other. To be able to understand those experiences, I felt a need to access those conversations and exchanges. This meant going further than collecting data from tick boxes at the end of course evaluation sheets. Taking a narrative approach and using qualitative interviews, I collected the stories of nine dental professionals. In the conversations that took place, the participants and I explored and reflected on our own practice, professional development and ICT. Using a performative analysis (Riessman 2008), I reconstructed the stories through Davies and Harré’s (1999) metaphor of an ‘unfolding narrative’ (p.42), taking stories as an emergent process through interaction with different social and cultural representations. While the focus at the start of this study was on ICT, it rapidly became clear that the participants did not regard ICT as a central part of being a practitioner and indeed a professional. Accordingly, the study became one of exploring being a practitioner and a professional, and the influences of recent organisational and institutional changes and ICT moved from a central to a peripheral focus. From the resultant stories, I found three performances dominated in which practitioners developed ways of “being”, “instincts”, as I named them which emerged in response to a negotiation with policy, practice and paths of development. I identified those instincts emerging from a “professional self” constructed from policy through fixed predetermined paths. This contrasted with a “practitioner self” which drew from intuition, craft-like practices, and paths of development which were largely undetermined. I identified shifting positions and subjectivities as practitioners reflected on their values for practice and professional development. From those reflections, there was a questioning of the professional role, the way the dental professional might be represented, the way the practitioner self might develop and the way they might position themselves, in particular in expanded spaces for professional development through ICT. In order to interpret the resultant performances within both global and micro-contexts, I viewed them through a critical lens, interrogating the sociocultural and political environment. I found that representations of the professional role suggested a challenge for education, self-determination and development. As a result, I saw those participants sitting in a “liminal space”; a junction of sociocultural influences framed by policy, professional life, practice and ICT. This liminal space yielded a multitude of challenges, negotiations and possibilities as the ‘inevitable consequences of certain economic, social and political processes’ (Brookfield 1995, p.36). In conclusion, in the face of those framings and education, I propose a need for a “professional literacy” and a new professional narrative that considers the capabilities and possibilities for dialogue and, in the light of our practice and advancing technology, would take account of expanded and undetermined paths of professional development.

In 2002, the National College for School Leadership launched what was regarded as the largest educational networking programme in the world. This brought together groups of schools to collaborate over developing agreed areas of their work. This thesis outlines a research project aimed at networks who were members of this programme and whose main activity had been action research conducted by network members. This research was intended to examine, and to understand, the participatory aspects of networks of this sort. Five overarching themes were drawn from the literature on participatory interventions and related to educational networks and to action research. The interaction of these three areas of literature provided the background against which the empirical aspects of this thesis were conducted. Based around an interpretive argument emphasising the contextual uniqueness of these networks, a case study methodology was adopted to study three networks. These three networks were those who had agreed to participate of a total of 18 that had matched the profile for selection and who had been invited to participate. The conduct of these three case studies used a mixed method approach examining documents produced by these networks as well as collecting data through the use of a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. From these three case studies overarching themes were identified in the ways that these networks related to participatory interventions. These themes specifically concerned: the approaches that these networks had taken to action research; the ways in which they had perceived and involved communities in their work; the nature of collaborative relationships in the networks; the relationship between the operation of the networks and principles of voluntarism and finally the roles of leadership in the networks. Overall, these networks presented a model by which individuals could collectively work together for a common aspiration, whilst retaining the flexibility to be relevant to local contexts.

This study has traced the autobiographical factors which have shaped the development of an inclusive teacher identity. Additionally, it has examined how the changing discourses of inclusion have shaped its realisation in practice across a teaching career which spans in excess of thirty years. Life history method is used to examine the biography and teaching career of one informant. Additionally, an auto-ethnographic approach is employed to consider the effects of inclusion on the school in which the participant currently works and in which I have worked. The school is referred to as Marshlands throughout the text. This is not a study which seeks to generalise. The data suggest that personal experiences of exclusion during childhood have significantly shaped the development of an inclusive teacher identity in both me and the participant. Foucault’s concept of transgression is applied to the narrative. Throughout the narrative it has been possible to identify acts of transgression by the informant, both within personal and professional contexts. Consequently it is tentatively suggested that transgression has played a significant role in the development of the informant’s values in relation to inclusion. Foucault’s framework of surveillance is subsequently applied to the narrative to illustrate how the informant and her colleagues at Marshlands have become objects of power, surveillance and intense scrutiny within a discourse of performativity. The narrative and auto-ethnographic account illustrate how it was possible for the informant to develop a more inclusive pedagogy under the previous discourse of integration in comparison to subsequent discourses of inclusion. The thesis demonstrates how both the participant and her colleagues at Marshlands have endured detrimental effects for demonstrating a commitment to inclusion. Whilst this study is small-scale, there are implications for similar schools that either choose to or are forced to retain their commitments to educating learners with diverse needs. Unless measures of school effectiveness are broadened to include strengths in inclusive practices, schools like Marshlands will continue to be sites of surveillance and intense monitoring.

La tesi mira a ridefinire lo statuto del personaggio nell’ambito del self-conscious novel postmoderno, alla luce delle più recenti tendenze narratologiche, con particolare riferimento all’unnatural narratology. Per poter presentare un modello scientificamente valido si è fatto ricorso alla comparazione della produzione letteraria di due macro-aree: quella britannica e quella slava (Russia - Unione Sovietica - e Polonia). Come figura di mediazione tra queste due culture si pone senza dubbio Vladimir V. Nabokov, cardine e personalità di spicco della ricerca. Tra le analisi testuali proposte sono stati presi in considerazione i seguenti autori: Julian Barnes, Vladimir Nabokov, Daniil Charms, Konstantin Vaginov, Andrej Bitov, Saša Sokolov, Bruno Schulz e Tadeusz Kantor. / The thesi aims to propose a new, flexible theoretical model of character capable to include an up-to-date mapping of the narrative strategies employed with this figure, thus redefining the notion. The adoption of an “unnatural” point of view enables us to concentrate “on the text’s otherness, on its monstrosity, on the role of chance and chaos” (Alber, 2002: 70). The choice of a comparative approach that focuses on British, Russian (Soviet) and Polish authors proves to be particularly effective in order to demonstrate the scientific validity of this new model. Textual analyses include the works of: Julian Barnes, Vladimir Nabokov, Daniil Charms, Konstantin Vaginov, Andrej Bitov, Saša Sokolov, Bruno Schulz and Tadeusz Kantor.